not Just another WordPress.com site

Monthly Archives: July 2011

Tomorrow I’m off on holiday for a week to pembrokeshire , wales. It’s not the other side of the world and lets be honest not going to be exotic, I will however be SWIMMING WITH A CROCODILE – Those of you who know me well , will know my final project at uni was an experimental animation staring several large styrofoam crocodiles. Que Nigel

( to be honest I can’t remember which one i’m using for arguments sake they are both called Nigel however I will be using only one nigel)

As I have already mentioned Nigel is made completely out of styrofoam , not only this he is about a meter long and is sort of oblong shape with curved corners as is one of these

I’m sure you can now see where I’m going with this. YES I am planning to body board using one of these crocs, today I have been making a few alterations to Nigel . For stability I have removed his bottom jaw and top row of teeth as I think when put in contact with the sea may not last long. I have also been spraying nigel with a tent waterproofing spray as although most of his skin is laytex and accrilic paint there is also a little bit of not so water proof paint such as poster paint…………. but thats the worst thing that could happen a bit of his paint runs in the sea ……

watch this space photo’s and video’s coming up in about a weeks time I have also pre written some blogs about some other creative projects I have planned for my holiday and timed them to be published at roughly the time I’ll be doing them – yes unfortunately I am that sad

This week I will still be working on my projects I’ve set for my self, but I am also starting to put together some professional promotional packs displaying my work and online presents to potential employers. This is a good idea for any one in my position by the way.

I’m ordering some new buisness cards with my up dated details on such as my now brand new domain name for me web site, www.abilloyd.com ( check it out if you haven’t all ready ) I’m ordering from a site called moo.com which I can highly recommend

I’m re writing and re-designing my creative c.v to hopefully look more appealing and more professional

researching the company’s I’m sending them too and design nice packaging to send it all off in

I decided to have a bit of a break today so I could get out of the house for a bit. However it is time I got some new business cards with my updated details , to take along to networking events and animation festivals. So I did find and design a few images for this perpose.

I am planning on attending as many animation festivals as possible this year not to mention hopefully entering a few aswell.

I am already planning to go to puppet place which takes place at the end of august in my home town of Bristol

As yet I am still to experience these particular festivals so can’t comment on them apart from telling you I am very excited to go. I am also keen in going to Bradford animation festival , FLIP festival and also Stoke Your Fires.

If any one knows of other animation festivals particularly in UK ( watching my budget ) and also with a stop motion sector – let me know ! ether in comments or email me at abilloyd@hotmail.co.uk

Having sent of my first set of illustrations of to be looked at, I decided today it was about time I did some work on Bristol Safari. The first part of this was some reference drawings for part of the character design process. This process was introduced to me whilst at uni by a wonderful visiting lecturer called Nick Roberson . He taught us that character design ( kind of like what I was saying with the illustration yesterday ) doesn’t start with drawing the first thing that comes into your head but finding interesting objects and shapes ( perhaps more complicated than the simple shapes I was using yesterday but the same kind of principle ) So today I have been drawing spoons and although I’ve got a fairly good idea of which of my creatures i’m working on , the shapes i’ve been playing with may inspire a part of another creature in this project or a completely different character in another project , its really all about reference.

So as you can see from above I drew a few different size/type/shape spoons , at the moment I’m liking the shape of the large spoon on the far left as the top bit makes quite a nice body shape with the two joining screws as eyes. Below you can see where I bent the spoons to create some more interesting shapes.

after my Drawing I turned my attention to the character that is the wildlife presenter who I am calling Saffron Nightsparrow. I’m using a different kind of method for her character as she is going to be human performing live action. So for this I started researching a few different wildlife presenters and studying them seeing how they move , speak , act – what they wear ect and came up with a basic outfit which I drew up roughly. I plan to develop Safrons character by writing diary entries as her and possibly start up a blog as if she’s writing it a bit nearer the time of finish.

To end nicely I leave you all with a few links to some hilarious videos of sloths that I came across whilst researching Wildlife video’s

A few days ago I was emailed by a friend of a friend asking if I would be willing to have a go at doing some illustrations for the Childrens book she’s writing. Obviously I was very excited by this and said yes straight away – I’ve not really done much illustration before and in my drawing I tend to do more realistic and accurate drawing ( as much as possible unfortunately not yet in Merlin’s case ) but I think its good to stretch your skills and so that’s my challenge to you today readers ( and yes I know its cheesy ) TRY SOMETHING DIFFERENT you never know you might like it!

Here is my initial drawings – Initial drawings are only really useful to make a mark on the page after that you really need to do some good research in order to develop you characters properly

So then I had a look at an Illustrator the person I’m doing this for had mentioned his name is Gary Swift a professional childrens illustrator. Below is some examples of Gary’s work

From looking at Garys work and a few other childrens charcters I saw that basically they where made up from simple shapes , so

my next step was drawing simple shapes from which I developed 2 characters from.

So I been trying to do a decent sculpt of the character Merlin from the BBC program Merlin to basically see if I can sculpt a recognisable sculpt of him. I’ve come across quite a bit of difficulty due to the fact that 1. the character has a really odd shaped head and face and 2. there are only really pictures with him face on, I can’t seem to find any photo’s of him from the side view. So today I’ve literally gone back to the drawing board on this one- if i can’t draw him I’m going to find it very hard to sculpt him , from the front ways drawing I’m hoping I’ll be able to work out some side on profiles in order to use for reference in sculpting. Below is the front ways picture of Merlin, bit hesitant to put this up as I though it looked ok before I placed the photo I was copying from beside it.

I’ll practise a bit more tomorrow – I can only get better right? also I have just found a side ways profile of Colin Morgan so this is also going to help alot , Plus my good friend Lianne Allen has just posted me some more pics on face book for me

So I have noticed people seem to be more drawn to this blog rather than my blogspot one. Also a very wise friend also steered me back to the world of wordpress. So you people who have been browsing my blog will now be getting something new to read hopefully everyday – time permitting. So lets get straight back into this , introducing my brand new project – BRISTOL SAFARI – I am currenty at the very beginning of my project so if you’ve only just come accross my blog today you are very fortunate. For those who don’t know I’ll let you in to a bit about myself , I am a recent graduate from staffordshire university having successfully achieved myself a 2.1 in stop motion animation. I am now setting about producing my own self directed study and boosting my online presence in order to hopefully one day achieve some kind of employment in the animation industry. “BRISTOL SAFARI” is going to be a mixture of stop motion animation and also live action. Some of it will be shot out side, the other part – the stop motion part , I am going to be experimenting with both indoor and out door before I decide where it will be shot. I hope to make BRISTOL SAFARI a series of short episodes rather than 1 film. As the name suggests BRISTOL SAFARI is going to include some very exciting sitings of some extremely rare animals.